


What a Wonderful Caricature of Intimacy

by celeste9



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Angst, Awkward Conversations, Gen, Huddling For Warmth, Stranded, Uneasy Allies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-14
Updated: 2017-09-14
Packaged: 2018-12-29 21:40:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12093984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celeste9/pseuds/celeste9
Summary: When Poe ends up stranded on an ice planet just as a storm hits, he supposes it would be his luck that his only refuge is already occupied - by Kylo Ren.





	What a Wonderful Caricature of Intimacy

**Author's Note:**

> For knightpilot week, day 5: stranded (and maybe also hurt/comfort?? depends on your view on huddling for warmth, I suppose, lol). Title from Panic at the Disco.

“This is the fucking worst,” Poe says.

Ren sighs, the exhale of warm breath frightfully close to Poe’s face, but he is so cold he can hardly even begrudge it. “It gets worse every time you open your mouth.”

“Well, excuse me, except actually, don’t, because you know what? I think I’m owed the right to be annoying. In fact, it’s the very least I can get. You know, after you tortured me and all.”

“I’m hardly likely to forget.”

“Can’t you use the Force or something? Warm us up?”

“The Force doesn’t work like that.” Ren sounds disgusted.

Poe thinks about Finn telling the story of disabling the shields on Starkiller, what Han had said, and wonders how annoying it would be if Poe told Ren he sounds exactly like his dad right now.

Maybe he’ll save that tidbit for later, like his secret weapon. He shifts, but there is just no getting comfortable when you’re cuddled up with the guy who tortured you and tried to murder your friends.

Yeah, this is the fucking worst.

He doesn’t even understand how this happened. Okay, he understands the part where he crashed his ship, that’s, like, not anything new, really, even good pilots crash sometimes, okay? The planet is a barren wasteland, cold as fuck, and Poe was just trying to find help. There was a storm brewing, a blizzard, and Poe needed shelter.

What he doesn’t understand is how he somehow managed to crash land on the same kriffing planet where Kylo Ren had crash landed. What he doesn’t understand is how the only kriffing hole in a rock he could find was already occupied by _Kylo Ren,_ also aiming to sit out the storm, and what he doesn’t understand is how now they’re curled together in an attempt to conserve body heat when Poe would genuinely like nothing more than to blow a hole in Ren’s fucking skull.

He really, really hopes his distress call got through.

He knows that BB-8 will be scouring every frequency he can, just in case. He knows if even the smallest fragment of his cry for help made it into atmosphere, BB will hear it, and BB will not rest until he mounts a rescue mission.

Poe just has to survive in the meantime, that’s all. Poe excels at surviving.

It’s only that apparently surviving, this time, means making temporarily nice with the biggest dick in the galaxy. Poe can manage that. He can.

“Can’t you pull out your lightsaber or something?” Poe says and then pauses in horror as his mind conjures up a disgustingly filthy image that he has definitely never, ever wanted to contemplate. He barrels ahead in hopes of purging it from his mind. “Surely it’s gotta give off some heat, right?”

“That’s not how it works!”

Yeah, Poe thinks. It is absolutely the right time. “You know you sound exactly like your dad.”

Kylo’s mouth opens and closes as though he is so horrifyingly overwhelmed that he can’t actually make any words come out. Despite what he just told Poe he is reaching around for his lightsaber, clutching the hilt.

“You’re gonna freeze faster if you kill me,” Poe points out helpfully.

“But I would be much, much happier.” Kylo has a twisted, sly little smile that reminds Poe of Leia, and that is a terrifying thought. “In any case, I expect your insides would keep me warmer than this paltry attempt at conserving heat.”

“Aw, Kylo,” Poe says, with his best smile. “If you wanted to get inside me all you had to do was ask.”

Kylo splutters in rage and Poe suspects it is only the truly desperate cold that keeps him where he is.

So worth the nightmares he is going to have if they get out of this, Poe decides.

-

Later they have nearly frozen ration bars that Poe feels he might choke on but he is too hungry to pass them up. He watches Ren’s face, so much closer than he ever desired to be, honestly. He still can’t quite make it all line up in his head, that Kylo is Ben, that the man in a mask who tore secrets out of his head was the same boy he used to lie under the stars with on Yavin 4. They had grown apart, Ben with his famous family and his Force sensitivity, but Poe had still considered him a friend all the way through his years in the Academy and into his time with the Navy.

He hadn’t known what had happened to Ben, not for sure. Only rumors.

But this pale-faced man with the scar on his cheek used to be solemn Ben Solo, whom Poe always tried to make laugh.

“Why’d you leave the mask on?” Poe asks. He knows Kylo will know what he means. “Afraid I’d recognize you?”

“It’s amusing that you think I’d care.”

“Intimidation, then. But that means you realize how not scary your actual face is, and that you think your enemies would be unimpressed. Sad, really. Got a complex about it?”

“I can’t believe I forgot how annoying you are.”

“So you remembered me in general? I’m touched.”

“You are impossible to forget.”

Though Poe knows Ren meant it to be insulting, it doesn’t quite come across that way, and the silence is heavy and uncomfortable.

Poe can’t stop thinking it, that this is _Ben,_ small Ben Solo with his crooked, shy smile. Poe had feared for him, when the massacre at the temple happened.

How stupid he had been.

“Did you think about it?” he asks, morbidly curious, though he probably doesn’t actually want to know the answer. “When you saw me? When you tortured me? Did it matter? That you’d been my friend?”

Kylo is silent for a long time. Poe thinks he won’t answer.

Then he says, “It didn’t matter. I had my mission.”

Poe snorts. “And I was in the way. I guess they must burn away your heart, when you pick the dark side.”

“It is still there,” Kylo says, and looks surprised to have said it.

Gaping at him for a moment, Poe says, “Clearly yours doesn’t work right. Your father…” Poe can’t even say it.

He remembers General Organa’s face, when he came back from Starkiller. He thinks he won’t ever forget it.

Kylo’s gaze flickers to the cave wall beyond Poe’s head. “He was not my father.”

“Oh, right. Because you aren’t Ben Solo; you’re Kylo Ren. Sorry.” Poe pauses only half a second before he has to add, “Do you even believe that poodoo yourself? Because as far as excuses go, let me tell you, that one is complete Bantha shit.”

“It didn’t matter,” Kylo says again, but he lacks the conviction of his own words.

Poe isn’t sure if that makes it better or worse, that Kylo still doesn’t even fully believe in the rightness of his own actions, his own path. He is still as lost as the boy Poe had once known, trying to do as others have told him he should do, but he isn’t a boy any longer, with the luxury of youthful mistakes.

Kylo Ren’s mistakes and half-hearted decisions cost lives.

“Your mother told me about your grandfather, you know,” Poe says, and watches the way Kylo’s full attention is immediately upon him. “Anakin Skywalker. Darth Vader. Whatever the hell. She told me he made a better choice in the end.” As far as Leia is concerned that is worth very little, but it does mean that Kylo has chosen to hang onto the version of Darth Vader that his grandfather himself rejected. “I don’t know what it is exactly you think you’re doing but pretty sure you completely missed the point as far as he’s concerned. If it’s just about the power you should say so, instead of hiding behind the shadow of a man who wasn’t what you think he was.”

Poe can feel the way Kylo bristles but he doesn’t respond.

They sit in bitter silence.

-

The blizzard is calming. Poe thinks surely now the Resistance must be on their way; they must be here soon. In another few hours he should be able to trace his steps back to the wreckage of his ship and hope it isn’t lost in a drift; he wants to get another message out. He wants to try to jury-rig some repairs so maybe he can get the hell off this planet.

Poe’s teeth are chattering; he hates the way he presses to Ren out of need. He hasn’t been this close to anyone in months; it figures the most action he’d get would be with kriffing Kylo Ren, while he tries not to freeze to death.

“What is it you even want?” Poe asks.

Kylo sighs, like he is so put-upon he can’t bear it. “I would like to get off this planet and away from you, for one.”

“Same,” Poe says. “But you know that’s not what I meant. What do you _want?_ You didn’t get the map, but what would you have done if you had? Found Luke Skywalker and killed him for your Leader Snoke? Because patricide wasn’t enough?”

“Maybe I would have. The Jedi deserve to be exterminated.”

“Is that what you told yourself, when the Knights of Ren massacred the Temple? All those children?”

They are pressed close enough that Poe can feel Kylo’s small flinch. “You don’t understand.”

“I understand that you’re an asshole. Pretty sure that’s all I need to know.”

“It was necessary,” Kylo bites out.

“For what? Snoke’s power trip? Your turn from being a kinda weird but generally nice kid to being some dark lord? I wish you would all stop pretending that the First Order is anything but a new Empire, out to subjugate who it can and destroy whatever and whoever gets in the way.”

“Like the New Republic is different? You think the Senate was blameless, that none of them were grabbing for power? You think my mother--”

“Don’t you dare,” Poe snarls. “Don’t you even dare. Your mother deserved better than you.”

“Well, she has it, doesn’t she? She has you!” Kylo’s voice sounds abnormally high and strangled.

Poe can’t… He doesn’t… He breathes in through his nose and lets it out. “And she’d still take you back in a heartbeat. After everything. Because she loves you, you selfish, murderous, disgusting piece of trash.”

They sit there breathing in each others’ faces and Poe wants to bash his forehead into Kylo’s nose but he knows that won’t solve anything; he’ll still be stuck here in the middle of nowhere with his appendages going numb, and probably Kylo will run him through with his lightsaber.

He kinda wants to do it anyway.

“I wonder if she appreciates you,” Kylo says, and all he sounds is bitter.

 _You never appreciated her,_ Poe thinks. _You should have loved her the way she deserved; you should never have left her. You should never have done this to her._

What Poe would give to have his mother still living, and Ren just tossed his aside. For Snoke. For power.

Ben had loved his mother. Poe remembers them together, laughing, smiling, affectionate. He doesn’t understand how anything could ever have changed that.

He doesn’t understand how Ben could have become this scarred man, this man consumed with anger.

Poe remembers Ben’s fear, but he remembers Ben’s love, too. He wonders what made Ben choose his fear, what made his fear stronger than his love.

“I was scared for you,” Poe says, like an impulse he can’t stop. “I worried for you. I didn’t know…” Poe takes a shuddering breath. “You never deserved any of it.”

“No,” Kylo says, dark gaze on the cave wall.

-

“So should I expect stormtroopers?” Poe asks a while later. It has settled beyond the cave and Poe wants to get up to see how the landscape looks post-storm but it is harder than he wants to admit to pull away from Kylo’s body heat. “A detachment of TIEs looking for you?”

“Do you think that I would tell you?” Kylo arches an eyebrow. “You would still make the First Order an excellent prize. I already know you are easily broken.”

“Fuck you,” Poe says, though there is no real heat behind it. He feels as though his anger has leached out of him, at least for the present. He is too tired to muster up the energy for more rage when he knows it solves nothing.

“I suppose your precious Resistance will be coming for you.”

“Suppose so,” Poe agrees, and hopes that is true. _Come on, Beebee._

Poe has enough faith in his own ingenuity and will that he isn’t really worried about making his way back to base on his own, but honestly, he would rather not have to. His fingers feel stiff in his gloves and he doesn’t love the prospect of delicate work in his current state and with the weather what it is.

“No one knows I am here,” Kylo admits.

Poe stares at him. Why would Kylo tell him that? It means no one is coming, it means that Poe could – the Resistance could –

There is a niggling feeling of wrongness prodding at Poe. It seems… unsporting, somehow, after all of this, to take advantage of their weak circumstances. Like it or not, Kylo helped Poe survive here. He doesn’t know what state he would be in without Kylo’s additional warmth.

They have been in a truce, that much is clearly true.

But how long does the truce hold?

It is his duty, really, to try to bring Kylo in. He owes it to Leia, and to the galaxy, and to himself. He _wants_ to. He should use every advantage he has. Kylo would.

Kylo will fight back but he is alone. He must be feeling the effects of the cold as much as Poe is.

He could, Poe thinks, be lying. Lulling Poe into a false sense of security. Laying a trap.

But Poe doesn’t think Kylo is lying and Poe trusts his instincts.

He gets to his feet, unwinding his limbs stiffly and slowly. He nearly topples over, feeling like some creaky old man. As he walks out of the depths of the cave to investigate the aftermath of the storm, he hears Kylo follow him.

All he can see is white. The drifts seem to ebb and flow around the entrance, blown higher here and there by the wind. They are lucky in that they won’t have to dig themselves out. Poe doubts that will be true of his crashed ship, however.

Then Poe hears the far-off sound of engines, ships he would recognize anywhere.

His squad.

 _I love you, Beebee,_ he thinks.

Kylo must hear it, too.

Kylo willingly volunteered information that he knew Poe could use. He made himself vulnerable.

Maybe he thought he knew the choice Poe would make. Poe was his friend once, too, and not just the other way around.

Poe doesn’t know the kind of man Ben Solo is anymore, but he knows the kind of man he is. Maybe that makes him a bad soldier, but he can’t bring himself to give up someone who helped him, however unwillingly and however much it was fueled by self-interest.

It wouldn’t be fair. That still means something to Poe.

“Get out of here before I change my mind,” Poe says.

Kylo stands there in surprise for a moment, staring, before he strides out the cave entrance, his black form vanishing in the snow.

Poe starts thinking about how he is going to amend his story to leave out the fact that Kylo Ren was ever here.

**_End_ **

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on Tumblr [here](http://serceleste.tumblr.com). :)


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